Shark's Tail Fish and Chippery, Sunshine West

I used to love potato cakes, even slightly dodgy ones from food courts that had been sitting there for hours. This love may have started in my first part time job as a teenager in a fish and chip shop. When I first was diagnosed coeliac I started craving them even more. I did indulge once when a friend made some gf ones for a potluck but aside from that have kept craving them. Unfortunately we don't deep fry at home so that wasn't an option. Thankfully there is a fish and chip shop which makes gluten free potato cakes and they use vegetable oil and a seperate fryer for gf items.  They have been offering gluten free options for about 4 years.,

I went today and got two gluten free potato cakes. The batter was super crunchy and oh so perfect. I doubt anyone would ever guess they were gluten free. I also got some minimal chips which was a generous serve and had the perfect ratio of crunchy and soft chips. I had two colleagues help me finish the chips who gave them a thumbs up.

Everything with an asterisk can be made gluten free, plus lots of fish of course. I will be trying their onion rings and pineapple or banana fritters in the near future. I'm thinking a quick visit her before or after the beach on hot summer days.



They are located close to a ring road exit but doubt they are close to public transport.

Shark's Tail Fish & Chippery
shop 1/136 the avenue
West Sunshine
Open 7 days
9360 5522

For more possible gf options at fish and chip shops check out Gluten Schmooten's list.

I used to love potato cakes, even slightly dodgy ones from food courts that had been sitting there for hours. This love may have started in my first part time job as a teenager in a fish and chip shop. When I first was diagnosed coeliac I started craving them even more. I did indulge once when a friend made some gf ones for a potluck but aside from that have kept craving them. Unfortunately we don't deep fry at home so that wasn't an option. Thankfully there is a fish and chip shop which makes gluten free potato cakes and they use vegetable oil and a seperate fryer for gf items.  They have been offering gluten free options for about 4 years.,

I went today and got two gluten free potato cakes. The batter was super crunchy and oh so perfect. I doubt anyone would ever guess they were gluten free. I also got some minimal chips which was a generous serve and had the perfect ratio of crunchy and soft chips. I had two colleagues help me finish the chips who gave them a thumbs up.

Everything with an asterisk can be made gluten free, plus lots of fish of course. I will be trying their onion rings and pineapple or banana fritters in the near future. I'm thinking a quick visit her before or after the beach on hot summer days.



They are located close to a ring road exit but doubt they are close to public transport.

Shark's Tail Fish & Chippery
shop 1/136 the avenue
West Sunshine
Open 7 days
9360 5522

For more possible gf options at fish and chip shops check out Gluten Schmooten's list.

reade more... Résuméabuiyad

Summer goodies

Lovely stuff around in both the garden and the greenhouse at the moment. Just a small selection here: Morello cherries on the tree, just ripe and ready to be made into beautiful deep red cherry sauce to go with pork and chicken and indeed just about any meat, as well as going really well with falafel; herbs such as basil and tarragon; tomatoes of all sorts; kankung, as it's known in south-east Asia(entsai in China, water spinach sometimes). All most colourful and most toothsome! And more to come--zucchini taking off, sweet corn to come eventually--peaches blushing up, beans running riot! It's the fertile time of the year.

Lovely stuff around in both the garden and the greenhouse at the moment. Just a small selection here: Morello cherries on the tree, just ripe and ready to be made into beautiful deep red cherry sauce to go with pork and chicken and indeed just about any meat, as well as going really well with falafel; herbs such as basil and tarragon; tomatoes of all sorts; kankung, as it's known in south-east Asia(entsai in China, water spinach sometimes). All most colourful and most toothsome! And more to come--zucchini taking off, sweet corn to come eventually--peaches blushing up, beans running riot! It's the fertile time of the year.

reade more... Résuméabuiyad

Artichoke Fields, a story of the past

The preserving of this year's artichoke harvest from our garden has prompted me to dig up again a story I wrote quite some years ago, about how the smell of artichokes brings back so many memories of my childhood for me. The story's been published at least two or three times in print form, well before the advent of blogs, and I thought it might bear reading again, as a hello to the new year.
 

ARTICHOKE FIELDS

 It is a hot day in the early seventies, and we children are fighting in the back of the car. Dad is driving steadily, smoothly, as he always does, driving as if he is anticipating all kinds of possible dangers, as if twenty-five years or so of driving have not inured him to the myriad possibilities of change. When I am older, it comes to me that this is how he has lived his whole life, on the brink, never taking it for granted, trying hard to keep control of it yet painfully aware of the knife-edge of life, of the way in which, in a second, things can change forever. When I am older, it comes to me that I am similar, driven to achieve, pursued by the awareness of life's fragility, the swiftness of time passing. But at the time, his careful driving is merely another of the traits, the shorthand of experience, which, together, make up "Dad"-- a person you accept unthinkingly, as you accept your mother, or your brothers and sisters. Dad is careful yet can also be awesomely impulsive; Maman is impulsive yet can also be icily logical. You don't think too much about those uneasy conjunctions; as a child, you rely on signs, on the known, and somehow accomodate those things, together.

But here we are, driving. The vinyl of the seats sticks to our thighs, and the warm closeness of a brotherly or sisterly leg leads to sotto voce quarrels about the most ridiculous things possible. It's summer, and we are driving for what seems like hours, to the other side of Sydney, into the wildness of Blacktown. As we approach its rural outskirts, Dad sits up more in his seat. Even though--or maybe because--he is city born and bred, he loves the country with a fervour born of happy memories of his great-grandparents' place in the Aveyron. When he was a small child, he would go there for holidays, and he has told us many stories of it, his eyes misting with a regret which I didn't quite understand. Later, I see it is not only nostalgia, but something more powerful--a need to hold on to a good, simple memory within a wartime childhood booby-trapped with pain, betrayal and ambivalence. Maman does not seem to have those needs; or at least, if she does, they have long been dealt with, subsumed to what, even then, we knew to be my father's greater ones. Greater in the sense of more ravaging , by the year, so that even as children we stepped carefully around them.

But the good memories connected with this kind of place have transformed Dad, at the moment. He does not look anxious, or harried; his even, smoothly pale olive skin is unmarked by frowns. He says, "It's astonishing, isn't it, to see how hard these people work, " and his tone is gentle, wondering, filled with the pleasure of its simplicity. It is traditional for him to say this, here; yet always Maman nods, always we hear him without wondering at its repetition.

We stop in front of the house. It is a very simple house, fibro (asbestos sheet), and we have only been further than the kitchen once or twice. But the house is unimportant. What is important is beyond it, in the flat fertile acres that surround the house, making it an island out of time, its Australianess an incongruity in the Europeaness of cultivated fields. For here are not acres of wheat, or of the other large, fullscale crops we associate with this vast land; but the smaller, denser patches of vegetables: lettuce in serried rows, tomatoes, ripening in sunrise colours, spinach and leeks and, especially, most especially, the artichoke fields. There they stand, tall and fierce in their greens and purples, acres of them, their tightly-packed heads swaying on their strong stems. Some of them are already going to flower; and their perfume--a strong, sweet smell, like wild honey--fills the air. They are beautiful, beautiful and wild as a Van Gogh painting. The sight of them always catches at my throat, so that even now, years later, I can see them, smell them, and wonder at the selectiveness of memory that will keep such pictures and not others. And, like a Van Gogh painting, if you don't simply stand on the sidelines, admiring, but venture inside them, the artichoke fields will reveal all kinds of unexpectedly painful things.

The farmers come to greet us, their very brown, very wrinkled faces split by their smiles into a thousand more tiny rivulets. I never learnt their names, and to me, at that age, they look immensely old, agelessly old, like peasants in an old picture. They are small, both of them, both dressed in black: but he is lean and wiry, with wild grey hair and sharp pale eyes, while she is round as she is high, her breasts like enormous soft pillows under her dress, her hair done up in a floppy bun, her eyes like lively brown birds in their nest of wrinkles. She is Maltese, he is a Yugoslav. Dad, accustomed, at the building sites he supervises, to working with men insisting on their Croatianess, or Serbianess, or Bosnianness, wonders at the farmer's calm avowal of being 'Yugoslav'--what does this show about his politics?--but does not press the point. But on the way home, he will say, "Hmm, say what you like, I've always found Yugoslavs difficult people to fathom. It's really the extremity of Europe, you know. . " And I wonder at the need of adults, too, for shorthand, for second hand wisdoms.

But Dad finds the woman farmer, the Maltese, very sympathetic. "Eh, paysan!" she says, or that's what it sounds like, in her shrill voice. Her voice, too, is ageless; we have heard, on a record at home, Portuguese peasant girls singing in exactly the same kind of shrill voices, voices you never hear, otherwise, in Australia. I think that her version of 'paysan' means something akin to friend, or compatriot, fellow-spirit, perhaps. Whatever it means, Dad is immensely proud of it. He preens under the accolade which she shrewdly--but not insincerely--gives him. Maman is more circumspect; she is closer--only one generation removed--from a peasant origin, and she has few illusions about it. "She's a good saleswoman, " is all she will say, later, when Dad, talking nineteen to the dozen, drives us back to our somnolent, rich suburb where ennui attacks his restless and troubled spirit like a physical pain.

They talk in a mixture of languages; some English, mixed with Italian, Portuguese, Spanish and even a bit of patois, the Occitan-derived dialect of the Toulouse area. Dad is always thrilled when the two farmers prove to understand some of the patois; he sees a connection between all kinds of European languages (or at least the Latin ones)and to hear this confirmed, especially here, the patois under the alien sky, is a source of joy.

We walk with them down the paths that lead away from the incongruous Australian house(where their only child, a daughter, sits eating biscuits in front of the television) and into the European preserves of the farm. Here, before you reach the hand-cultivated fields of vegetables, are neatly-arranged poultry runs, with chickens running about, and rows of rabbit hutches, where blink fat rabbits. There are no pets or superfluous things; in this setting, away from the house which diminishes them, the farmers are tough, witty, their tenacity written in their faces, with none of the bewilderment which must seize them, more than once, in this country. I look at them and think of their daughter and how it must be for them all when they have to come up to the school. When my parents come, I am in agony of fear, hoping they won't say the 'wrong' thing in the 'wrong' sort of accent. There are other people we know, Italians, whose attitude towards their educated children is humble, frighteningly so. My parents aren't like that, at all; yet I wonder how these two, these farmers, and their daughter, must feel like, when they have to leave the artichoke fields and go to the school, or the supermarket, or the myriad things one must do in such a society. It makes me squirm, this thought, and so I turn away from it, and towards the fields. It never occurs to me , of course, that maybe it did not touch them, that the shame may only be in the minds of self-conscious children.

At first, we look in the hutches, say, "Isn't that one sweet?" and the farmer smiles, showing bad teeth, and says, in her appallingly accented English, "Good eating, that one!" We are at the age, in the place and time where such statements appear callous; so we are silent, and ignore Dad's I-told-you-so-grin. He has often said we are becoming too soft, sentimental, Australian; Europeans are tough people who look reality in the face. You like lapin a la moutarde? Right, well then you must be ready to first catch your rabbit and kill it. . Or to plunge your hands without disgust into the freshly-killed carcase of a chicken and make it into an objet de table, a dish, rather than a once-living thing. We are tenderhearted; but our feelings never extend to the nicely trussed, carefully jointed meat dish that appears on the table. . .

Now she is walking in the artichoke fields, talking shrilly, a mixture of salty comment on current events, and wild praise of her vegetables. He is silent ("Taciturn, like all Yugoslavs, " Dad is delighted to say, and I wonder a little at how adults seem to need the shorthand of second-hand wisdoms, too). But he smiles quite a bit, and touches the plants, gently, as if he is greeting each. That, surely, is folly. He and his wife are unsentimental, without fancy or falsity, honest, as the French saying has it, as ‘du bon pain’. But that, surely, is a sentimentality, too; for I have heard Maman saying that these two never lose ‘le nord’, always stick to what they know they want, and are not above using cajoling or even a judiciously-placed marketing ploy to sell their vegetables. They are not doing this for fun, for ‘du folklore’: that is the mistake of urban people, throughout the ages. Simplicity is in the eye of the beholder.

Every so often, the farmer stops. She throws an arm out to her husband: this one. She stoops, cuts the stem, throws the vegetable into the basket he is carrying. Dad trots just behind her, asking her all kinds of questions. She answers with aplomb and humour, in her shrill voice, while her husband fills the basket and smiles what my mother would call a 'corner' smile; half-sceret, enigmatic. We children and Maman follow behind desultorily; the smell of the big vegetables fills our nostrils with a heady odour, their sharp thorns prick the unwary child who leaves the narrow paths between the rows. We all love artichokes; some Sunday nights, that's all we've eaten, an enormous tureen filled to the top with the boiled vegetables, served with vinaigrette on each person's plate. The table would fill up with mountains of discarded leaves, plundered for their bit of sweet flesh, then put aside for the next one. There is something addictively wonderful about artichokes; the more and more frenetic peeling-back of leaves, till you get to the 'straw' inside, and peel that off as cleanly as a bandage, to reveal the succulent flesh of the heart. We ate the stems, too; the Blacktown farmers always sold us young, fresh artichokes, so that their stems were as tender as asparagus. Occasionally, we'd eat them with butter and garlic, or tomatoes. But the simple one, the boiled-and-vinaigrette ones was what we preferred.

We always lingered in those fields, dodging thorns, and in areas where the purple flowers were really out, the bees as well, maddened, as we were, by the heavy smell of the artichokes. Once, I remember, the farmer picked one of the flowers and gave it to me. The unexpectedness of the gesture made me blush, and for the rest of our time there, I couldn't resist putting my nose as close as possible to the flower. I've always been sensitive to smells, finding them powerful evokers of emotion and place, and now, I try to think what it was that made this smell so heady. Roses smelt sweeter, muskier, richer; vanilla smelt more homely and tender; the thick brown smell of meat made me feel hungrier. This was a smell of almost-wildness, of something only just tamed, and only dimly understood, something whose discovery was concealed under layers of half-meanings. It was not the smell of careful, cultivated Europe, neatly arranged, tamed and civilised, the Europe of the mythologisers or the nostalgic. Rather, it was the smell of the Europe whose inheritance was mine, which seeped into me like instinct, but was submerged, like instinct, for a long time. A Europe--a France-- not only of the mind or of the comfortable senses; but also one of the blood's leap, of the pain of rejection. The France my father felt in exile from, the France my mother followed him from, despite her own rather less ambivalent feelings. A corner of Europe forever elusive, never pinned down, half-wild, half-tame, of heady, unforgotten smell, uncomfortable at times, maybe never to be fully understood.

The preserving of this year's artichoke harvest from our garden has prompted me to dig up again a story I wrote quite some years ago, about how the smell of artichokes brings back so many memories of my childhood for me. The story's been published at least two or three times in print form, well before the advent of blogs, and I thought it might bear reading again, as a hello to the new year.
 

ARTICHOKE FIELDS

 It is a hot day in the early seventies, and we children are fighting in the back of the car. Dad is driving steadily, smoothly, as he always does, driving as if he is anticipating all kinds of possible dangers, as if twenty-five years or so of driving have not inured him to the myriad possibilities of change. When I am older, it comes to me that this is how he has lived his whole life, on the brink, never taking it for granted, trying hard to keep control of it yet painfully aware of the knife-edge of life, of the way in which, in a second, things can change forever. When I am older, it comes to me that I am similar, driven to achieve, pursued by the awareness of life's fragility, the swiftness of time passing. But at the time, his careful driving is merely another of the traits, the shorthand of experience, which, together, make up "Dad"-- a person you accept unthinkingly, as you accept your mother, or your brothers and sisters. Dad is careful yet can also be awesomely impulsive; Maman is impulsive yet can also be icily logical. You don't think too much about those uneasy conjunctions; as a child, you rely on signs, on the known, and somehow accomodate those things, together.

But here we are, driving. The vinyl of the seats sticks to our thighs, and the warm closeness of a brotherly or sisterly leg leads to sotto voce quarrels about the most ridiculous things possible. It's summer, and we are driving for what seems like hours, to the other side of Sydney, into the wildness of Blacktown. As we approach its rural outskirts, Dad sits up more in his seat. Even though--or maybe because--he is city born and bred, he loves the country with a fervour born of happy memories of his great-grandparents' place in the Aveyron. When he was a small child, he would go there for holidays, and he has told us many stories of it, his eyes misting with a regret which I didn't quite understand. Later, I see it is not only nostalgia, but something more powerful--a need to hold on to a good, simple memory within a wartime childhood booby-trapped with pain, betrayal and ambivalence. Maman does not seem to have those needs; or at least, if she does, they have long been dealt with, subsumed to what, even then, we knew to be my father's greater ones. Greater in the sense of more ravaging , by the year, so that even as children we stepped carefully around them.

But the good memories connected with this kind of place have transformed Dad, at the moment. He does not look anxious, or harried; his even, smoothly pale olive skin is unmarked by frowns. He says, "It's astonishing, isn't it, to see how hard these people work, " and his tone is gentle, wondering, filled with the pleasure of its simplicity. It is traditional for him to say this, here; yet always Maman nods, always we hear him without wondering at its repetition.

We stop in front of the house. It is a very simple house, fibro (asbestos sheet), and we have only been further than the kitchen once or twice. But the house is unimportant. What is important is beyond it, in the flat fertile acres that surround the house, making it an island out of time, its Australianess an incongruity in the Europeaness of cultivated fields. For here are not acres of wheat, or of the other large, fullscale crops we associate with this vast land; but the smaller, denser patches of vegetables: lettuce in serried rows, tomatoes, ripening in sunrise colours, spinach and leeks and, especially, most especially, the artichoke fields. There they stand, tall and fierce in their greens and purples, acres of them, their tightly-packed heads swaying on their strong stems. Some of them are already going to flower; and their perfume--a strong, sweet smell, like wild honey--fills the air. They are beautiful, beautiful and wild as a Van Gogh painting. The sight of them always catches at my throat, so that even now, years later, I can see them, smell them, and wonder at the selectiveness of memory that will keep such pictures and not others. And, like a Van Gogh painting, if you don't simply stand on the sidelines, admiring, but venture inside them, the artichoke fields will reveal all kinds of unexpectedly painful things.

The farmers come to greet us, their very brown, very wrinkled faces split by their smiles into a thousand more tiny rivulets. I never learnt their names, and to me, at that age, they look immensely old, agelessly old, like peasants in an old picture. They are small, both of them, both dressed in black: but he is lean and wiry, with wild grey hair and sharp pale eyes, while she is round as she is high, her breasts like enormous soft pillows under her dress, her hair done up in a floppy bun, her eyes like lively brown birds in their nest of wrinkles. She is Maltese, he is a Yugoslav. Dad, accustomed, at the building sites he supervises, to working with men insisting on their Croatianess, or Serbianess, or Bosnianness, wonders at the farmer's calm avowal of being 'Yugoslav'--what does this show about his politics?--but does not press the point. But on the way home, he will say, "Hmm, say what you like, I've always found Yugoslavs difficult people to fathom. It's really the extremity of Europe, you know. . " And I wonder at the need of adults, too, for shorthand, for second hand wisdoms.

But Dad finds the woman farmer, the Maltese, very sympathetic. "Eh, paysan!" she says, or that's what it sounds like, in her shrill voice. Her voice, too, is ageless; we have heard, on a record at home, Portuguese peasant girls singing in exactly the same kind of shrill voices, voices you never hear, otherwise, in Australia. I think that her version of 'paysan' means something akin to friend, or compatriot, fellow-spirit, perhaps. Whatever it means, Dad is immensely proud of it. He preens under the accolade which she shrewdly--but not insincerely--gives him. Maman is more circumspect; she is closer--only one generation removed--from a peasant origin, and she has few illusions about it. "She's a good saleswoman, " is all she will say, later, when Dad, talking nineteen to the dozen, drives us back to our somnolent, rich suburb where ennui attacks his restless and troubled spirit like a physical pain.

They talk in a mixture of languages; some English, mixed with Italian, Portuguese, Spanish and even a bit of patois, the Occitan-derived dialect of the Toulouse area. Dad is always thrilled when the two farmers prove to understand some of the patois; he sees a connection between all kinds of European languages (or at least the Latin ones)and to hear this confirmed, especially here, the patois under the alien sky, is a source of joy.

We walk with them down the paths that lead away from the incongruous Australian house(where their only child, a daughter, sits eating biscuits in front of the television) and into the European preserves of the farm. Here, before you reach the hand-cultivated fields of vegetables, are neatly-arranged poultry runs, with chickens running about, and rows of rabbit hutches, where blink fat rabbits. There are no pets or superfluous things; in this setting, away from the house which diminishes them, the farmers are tough, witty, their tenacity written in their faces, with none of the bewilderment which must seize them, more than once, in this country. I look at them and think of their daughter and how it must be for them all when they have to come up to the school. When my parents come, I am in agony of fear, hoping they won't say the 'wrong' thing in the 'wrong' sort of accent. There are other people we know, Italians, whose attitude towards their educated children is humble, frighteningly so. My parents aren't like that, at all; yet I wonder how these two, these farmers, and their daughter, must feel like, when they have to leave the artichoke fields and go to the school, or the supermarket, or the myriad things one must do in such a society. It makes me squirm, this thought, and so I turn away from it, and towards the fields. It never occurs to me , of course, that maybe it did not touch them, that the shame may only be in the minds of self-conscious children.

At first, we look in the hutches, say, "Isn't that one sweet?" and the farmer smiles, showing bad teeth, and says, in her appallingly accented English, "Good eating, that one!" We are at the age, in the place and time where such statements appear callous; so we are silent, and ignore Dad's I-told-you-so-grin. He has often said we are becoming too soft, sentimental, Australian; Europeans are tough people who look reality in the face. You like lapin a la moutarde? Right, well then you must be ready to first catch your rabbit and kill it. . Or to plunge your hands without disgust into the freshly-killed carcase of a chicken and make it into an objet de table, a dish, rather than a once-living thing. We are tenderhearted; but our feelings never extend to the nicely trussed, carefully jointed meat dish that appears on the table. . .

Now she is walking in the artichoke fields, talking shrilly, a mixture of salty comment on current events, and wild praise of her vegetables. He is silent ("Taciturn, like all Yugoslavs, " Dad is delighted to say, and I wonder a little at how adults seem to need the shorthand of second-hand wisdoms, too). But he smiles quite a bit, and touches the plants, gently, as if he is greeting each. That, surely, is folly. He and his wife are unsentimental, without fancy or falsity, honest, as the French saying has it, as ‘du bon pain’. But that, surely, is a sentimentality, too; for I have heard Maman saying that these two never lose ‘le nord’, always stick to what they know they want, and are not above using cajoling or even a judiciously-placed marketing ploy to sell their vegetables. They are not doing this for fun, for ‘du folklore’: that is the mistake of urban people, throughout the ages. Simplicity is in the eye of the beholder.

Every so often, the farmer stops. She throws an arm out to her husband: this one. She stoops, cuts the stem, throws the vegetable into the basket he is carrying. Dad trots just behind her, asking her all kinds of questions. She answers with aplomb and humour, in her shrill voice, while her husband fills the basket and smiles what my mother would call a 'corner' smile; half-sceret, enigmatic. We children and Maman follow behind desultorily; the smell of the big vegetables fills our nostrils with a heady odour, their sharp thorns prick the unwary child who leaves the narrow paths between the rows. We all love artichokes; some Sunday nights, that's all we've eaten, an enormous tureen filled to the top with the boiled vegetables, served with vinaigrette on each person's plate. The table would fill up with mountains of discarded leaves, plundered for their bit of sweet flesh, then put aside for the next one. There is something addictively wonderful about artichokes; the more and more frenetic peeling-back of leaves, till you get to the 'straw' inside, and peel that off as cleanly as a bandage, to reveal the succulent flesh of the heart. We ate the stems, too; the Blacktown farmers always sold us young, fresh artichokes, so that their stems were as tender as asparagus. Occasionally, we'd eat them with butter and garlic, or tomatoes. But the simple one, the boiled-and-vinaigrette ones was what we preferred.

We always lingered in those fields, dodging thorns, and in areas where the purple flowers were really out, the bees as well, maddened, as we were, by the heavy smell of the artichokes. Once, I remember, the farmer picked one of the flowers and gave it to me. The unexpectedness of the gesture made me blush, and for the rest of our time there, I couldn't resist putting my nose as close as possible to the flower. I've always been sensitive to smells, finding them powerful evokers of emotion and place, and now, I try to think what it was that made this smell so heady. Roses smelt sweeter, muskier, richer; vanilla smelt more homely and tender; the thick brown smell of meat made me feel hungrier. This was a smell of almost-wildness, of something only just tamed, and only dimly understood, something whose discovery was concealed under layers of half-meanings. It was not the smell of careful, cultivated Europe, neatly arranged, tamed and civilised, the Europe of the mythologisers or the nostalgic. Rather, it was the smell of the Europe whose inheritance was mine, which seeped into me like instinct, but was submerged, like instinct, for a long time. A Europe--a France-- not only of the mind or of the comfortable senses; but also one of the blood's leap, of the pain of rejection. The France my father felt in exile from, the France my mother followed him from, despite her own rather less ambivalent feelings. A corner of Europe forever elusive, never pinned down, half-wild, half-tame, of heady, unforgotten smell, uncomfortable at times, maybe never to be fully understood.

reade more... Résuméabuiyad

A. Bongiovanni and KFL: Supermarkets in the West

Sure when you move to a different area you need to do things like find a new doctor, dentist etc but one of the most annoying but also kind of exciting thing is exploring new supermarkets. I'm the type of person who loves to stroll around supermarkets in new countries etc just exploring what sorts of products they have. I'm sure i'm in the minority here and other people have lives or something but if your like me then continue reading if not perhaps this can serve as some sort of boring night time reading to put you to sleep. 

I wanted to tell you about two quite different supermarkets they we frequent in our new hood. The first is in seddon. Seddon is a tiny slightly yuppish suburb with several cafes, at least two dog accessory shops and lots of seddon puns: seddonia, seddon deadly sins, seddon hand etc. They are also home o A. Bongiovanni a fancy grocery store.

Otherwise known as a 'organic and gluten free specialist'!

Which is around the corner from one of my favourite pieces of street art, I love this series in general you can see similar ones in footscray, brunswick etc but this is my fave.

They do have lots of gluten free flours, cereal and one of the best gf breads- black ruby bread

They also have some mexican things like black beans and all sorts of peppers:

And one of the biggest arlington tapioca dessert range I have seen, if you haven't tried them yet, you should! Also coyo yogurt and funky pies.

One warning about A. Bioniovanni though, its pricey. I was so excited to see their big range of special products whereas Toby was just a tad outraged about how expensive it is was. Also they close early like at 7pm on weeknights.

A. Bongiovanni and Son Grocery Store
176 Victoria Street
Seddon
9689 8669


The second supermarket they were frequent a little more is almost the opposite. It's an Asian supermarket in Footscray:



It has one of the biggest tofu ranges I have seen. I refuse to buy non asian tofu from places like coles (except for the occasional smoked tofu). Asian tofu like yensons have much more variety, better quality and much cheaper (like more than half the price).

I also saw stuff I have never seen before like jelly tofu:

And tofu and sauce to make the chinese style dessert which I love called douha

They also a had a big range of dried mockmeat-tvp style, plus lots of noodles and coriander for 69 cents!

KFL Supermarket-Footscray

176 Barkly Street

Footscray

9687 4855

Sure when you move to a different area you need to do things like find a new doctor, dentist etc but one of the most annoying but also kind of exciting thing is exploring new supermarkets. I'm the type of person who loves to stroll around supermarkets in new countries etc just exploring what sorts of products they have. I'm sure i'm in the minority here and other people have lives or something but if your like me then continue reading if not perhaps this can serve as some sort of boring night time reading to put you to sleep. 

I wanted to tell you about two quite different supermarkets they we frequent in our new hood. The first is in seddon. Seddon is a tiny slightly yuppish suburb with several cafes, at least two dog accessory shops and lots of seddon puns: seddonia, seddon deadly sins, seddon hand etc. They are also home o A. Bongiovanni a fancy grocery store.

Otherwise known as a 'organic and gluten free specialist'!

Which is around the corner from one of my favourite pieces of street art, I love this series in general you can see similar ones in footscray, brunswick etc but this is my fave.

They do have lots of gluten free flours, cereal and one of the best gf breads- black ruby bread

They also have some mexican things like black beans and all sorts of peppers:

And one of the biggest arlington tapioca dessert range I have seen, if you haven't tried them yet, you should! Also coyo yogurt and funky pies.

One warning about A. Bioniovanni though, its pricey. I was so excited to see their big range of special products whereas Toby was just a tad outraged about how expensive it is was. Also they close early like at 7pm on weeknights.

A. Bongiovanni and Son Grocery Store
176 Victoria Street
Seddon
9689 8669


The second supermarket they were frequent a little more is almost the opposite. It's an Asian supermarket in Footscray:



It has one of the biggest tofu ranges I have seen. I refuse to buy non asian tofu from places like coles (except for the occasional smoked tofu). Asian tofu like yensons have much more variety, better quality and much cheaper (like more than half the price).

I also saw stuff I have never seen before like jelly tofu:

And tofu and sauce to make the chinese style dessert which I love called douha

They also a had a big range of dried mockmeat-tvp style, plus lots of noodles and coriander for 69 cents!

KFL Supermarket-Footscray

176 Barkly Street

Footscray

9687 4855

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Reverence Hotel - Footscray

Toby and I finally started to explore the bike paths in the west, we road to the docklands and back, it was quite quick with hardly any traffic lights to stop at. Afterwards we rode to reverence hotel which is right next to the bike path. Reverence is an omni pub with vegan options, it is owned by the ex arthouse owners. Every tuesday night they have trivia, $3 tacos and $3 tecate's (mexican beer), but this week they had it today-boxing day.  Tuesday never seems to work time wise but a public holiday was perfect timing. We went along with Cindy and Michael, see their blog in a few days for better pics!

There was a mixture of hipsters and some older locals but unfortunately there was no inside tables left so we sat outside in the beer garden. Looks like they take bookings since a few tables were reserved. I notice they also had pizzas on their regular menu with vegan and gf options from Thursday-Sunday.

There was 4 taco options (all gf), two meat options and two vegan options: beans and tofu. Toby ordered one of each for me and him:



The tofu was my favourite and reminded me of our tofu tacos, it was crumbled and flavoured with smoked paprika and other spices. It was served with a creamy mayo type sauce with home made salsa and lime on the side. Two wasn't enough for either of us, toby needed four to get full, and I needed 3 in total. I was pretty pleased with my $9 dinner, I really had low expectations but they were both great. The bean taco was tobys favourite, it has mushrooms and avocado and corn in it. Toby was pleased with cheap but good beer. We will be back to try the pizza another night but pleased to have another westside vegan option.
 .
It has been blogged about the good hearted.

Reverence Hotel
28 Napier Street
Footscray

Toby and I finally started to explore the bike paths in the west, we road to the docklands and back, it was quite quick with hardly any traffic lights to stop at. Afterwards we rode to reverence hotel which is right next to the bike path. Reverence is an omni pub with vegan options, it is owned by the ex arthouse owners. Every tuesday night they have trivia, $3 tacos and $3 tecate's (mexican beer), but this week they had it today-boxing day.  Tuesday never seems to work time wise but a public holiday was perfect timing. We went along with Cindy and Michael, see their blog in a few days for better pics!

There was a mixture of hipsters and some older locals but unfortunately there was no inside tables left so we sat outside in the beer garden. Looks like they take bookings since a few tables were reserved. I notice they also had pizzas on their regular menu with vegan and gf options from Thursday-Sunday.

There was 4 taco options (all gf), two meat options and two vegan options: beans and tofu. Toby ordered one of each for me and him:



The tofu was my favourite and reminded me of our tofu tacos, it was crumbled and flavoured with smoked paprika and other spices. It was served with a creamy mayo type sauce with home made salsa and lime on the side. Two wasn't enough for either of us, toby needed four to get full, and I needed 3 in total. I was pretty pleased with my $9 dinner, I really had low expectations but they were both great. The bean taco was tobys favourite, it has mushrooms and avocado and corn in it. Toby was pleased with cheap but good beer. We will be back to try the pizza another night but pleased to have another westside vegan option.
 .
It has been blogged about the good hearted.

Reverence Hotel
28 Napier Street
Footscray

reade more... Résuméabuiyad

Master Baker: A delicious story for Christmas

To all readers of A la mode frangourou, joyeux Noël and a happy New Year! And hope you enjoy this story of food, friendship, and French villages..

MASTER BAKER

a story by Sophie Masson

In the tiny French village of Lézac, there once lived a baker called Madame Gabrielle. Out of her ovens came tiny tarts as bright as jewels, cream puffs soft as pillows, croissants like golden moons, pastry horns full of cream. Every morning, the street outside her little shop smelt of heaven! And every morning, the bell above her shop door tinkled on the minute, as the whole village of Lézac came to buy her bread and cakes.

First came Monsieur Malou, and his poodle Cachou, with red ribbon tied all round her ears. He always bowed, and smiled, and said weren't the days splendid--and, oh--Madame. . could he have a cream puff? For Cachou, of course, who had such a sweet tooth!

Then came Madame Touffu, who was dressed all in blue, with her broom and her mop and her scarf. "Oh, madame, madame, it's courage I need--for the floors are so hard and so worn! What do you suggest? Will you get me your best?" And Madame knew just what she meant. Into a bag went two large golden horns, filled and filled to the top with sweet cream. . .

Mademoiselle Celie, who taught at the school, came in blushing and smiling with joy. "Oh, Madame Gabrielle! Your shop smells so good! Can I have a croissant and a tart?"

There was Monsieur Mizette, who farmed pigs and geese; and Pere Robert, the priest, who made goat cheese as a hobby; there was Madame Lebrun, who played on the flute, and Monsieur Barru, who played all-day bowls. There were old ones and young ones and sour ones and bold ones. And children! Children! It was more than heaven, for children, that shop!

So Madame Gabrielle was happy as could be, with her cakes, her shop, her customers, and her cat, Titi. Until the day--oh, sad to say! when all her happiness went away.

One day she woke to the song of birds--and the thump of hammers, the whine of saws. And what should she see in the street straight across--but a signmaker, busily working on a new shopfront, at something which read, bold as you please: "Monsieur Henri's. . . Cakes ". That was all he had done, so far, but it was enough for madame Gabrielle. She dressed in haste and went outside all askew. Who was Monsieur Henri? What did he want here? The village could not have two bakers! She came in at the door, and this is what she saw:

A tall brown man in a bright red suit, balancing plates and pots in his hands. Such elegance, such style! He was all long legs and well-polished shoes, his suit was smart, his hair black and bright. Madame Gabrielle looked down for a moment at herself. Her feet, well-planted in heavy black shoes; her floury overall, her short strong legs. She touched her wild curly hair, and her insides all curled. She looked all around her, and she wanted to cry.

"You are madame Gabrielle?" the tall man said. "I am monsieur Henri. I am so pleased to meet you!"
"But not me, but not me!" said madame Gabrielle, and she turned on her heel out the door and went back to her shop.

All that day and that night, she looked in all kinds of books, and cooked and cooked and cooked. "I will not be beaten by a city baker!" she thought. "He will see, he will see, that monsieur wih his city ways!" Her customers said, when they came in the shop, "Have you seen, madame, what is happening, across the road?"

But Madame Gabrielle just pursed her lips and her face was all sour and all sad. She thought of monsieur Henri and his smart suits, and her insides burned. She would not look, she would not smile.

The next day, the people gasped as they came by madame Gabrielle's windows. Such a sight had never been seen before! Tiers of towering cakes, gigantic pies stuffed with plump fruit and marzipan monsters of all kinds of colours. And a huge chocolate cake, with a sugar-spun king in the centre.

The bell rang all day in the shop, but madame Gabrielle kept the door shut. She'd had no time to make tarts and croissants and cream puffs. She'd just made all those gigantic cakes, and she couldn't bring herself to sell them. Tired as she was, she could not help being glad that across the road, the tall brown man stood with his arms crossed, looking and looking. "There, that'll show him!" she thought, and went to bed happy.

The next day, madame Gabrielle could hardly drag herself out of bed, because she'd spent the night cooking still more. She rushed downstairs in her old plaid nightie, and looked across the street. Ah--it was all still shuttered and quiet! But there was a huge sign saying, "Grand Opening Tomorrow! Be There!"

Madame Gabrielle gritted her teeth. She gathered up the things she'd cooked, and put them in her window. Huge lacquered choux, glistening with caramel; eclairs as bright as lightning; and a wonderful piece indeed, a pastry drummer, drumming ceaselessly on a caramel drum. Crowds gathered, people pointed, looked, exclaimed. Not only were there people from the village, but people, too, from the neighbouring town. They milled, and swilled, but madame Gabrielle did not open her door. She stood, resolute, steely-eyed, staring across the street where not a movement was to be seen. Maybe, she thought hopefully, the city baker would realise it was no good, he would never beat her. . But an uneasy feeling crept in her, still--for perhaps he was simply biding his time, waiting, and he would have a fabulous, a wonderful window, and all the people would flock there! She turned and ran back to her kitchen, to think and plot and dream. Tomorrow she'd have a show to outstrip all shows, something so grand no-one would ever think to look in monsieur Henri's windows!

The next morning, there were huge crowds all gathered, and a buzz of talking and laughing. Reporters were there, and photographers with cameras. Both shops were silent and still--but across madame Gabrielle's windows, a great curtain was drawn across. WAIT AND SEE! said a sign on the curtain.

At precisely 9 o'clock, the curtain was drawn--and oh, how the crowd gasped!For there in the window was something so bold, so grand, that all they could do was look and look, their eyes as round as doughnuts. There, fair and square in the centre of the window, stood a fortress of pastry baked hard as brick, with gleaming caramel windows! And from the windows of the fortress peered a hundred soldiers, all sugar, with bows made of caramel and arrows made of ice.

"What a marvellous thing!" said the reporters and the photographers.

"A most stupendous thing!" said the people of the neighbouring town.

"A most exciting thing, " sighed Monsieur Malou, and madame Touffu, and mademoiselle Celie, and all the village, as they watched the baked-hard fortress, and the sickly-sweet soldiers, and their stomachs rumbled as loud as thunder.

Only the children stood and stared, and stared and stood, and finally one of them said, "Yes, it's marvellous, it's stupendous, but can you eat it?"

"Eat it?" said the reporters, the photographers, the townspeople and the villagers.

"Eat it?" said Madame Gabrielle, and on her face a frown grew and grew and grew. "Eat it? Why, child, that's a work of art, that is! Eat it, indeed!"

"But do you have a tart to sell?" said the child. "Oh, madame Gabrielle, one of your tarts!"

"Or a cream puff?" said Monsieur Malou, counting on his fingers. "It makes five days since I have eaten one of your cream puffs--I mean Cachou has not. And it makes her miserable!"

"A croissant, " sighed Mademoiselle Celie.

"A pastry horn, " moaned madame Touffu.

Madame Gabrielle looked at them for a while. "I have no time, " she said coldly. "No time for ordinary things. " She pointed across to monsieur Henri, who had come out from his silent, shuttered shop. "It is his fault, his alone! Why did he have to come here, and spoil everything?"

But Monsieur Henri smiled. His suit was vanilla today, a soft vanilla like icecream. "I, too, have an opening, today, " he said. With a quick, graceful movement, he drew away the curtain from across his shop window.

"Oh, " said the crowd. "Oh, ah, oh, " said the crowd.

Madame Gabrielle's mouth fell open, like a marzipan frog's. She stared at monsieur Henri's shop, at its glass shelves edged with gold, its rows of plates, its pure white curtains--and especially at its sign, written boldly in gold-leaf paint. She blinked.

"I tried to tell you, " said monsieur Henri. "I am not a baker. I do not like baking. I hate baking! I came here to open a teashop, because I had heard of your wonderful baking, and I thought you could make cakes for me. But then you wouldn't talk to me, and I was worried my dream would never happen!"

Madame Gabrielle looked at monsieur Henri. She looked at monsieur Henri's shop, where the new sign now flashed, in all its glory. Then she turned and looked at the fortress of pastry.

Everyone held their breath--the reporters, the photographers, the townspeople, the villagers. And especially the children!

"It is a marvellous thing, " madame Gabrielle said, nodding. "Oh, yes. But. . " and then she paused, and a slow smile came to her face. "But you'd crack your teeth on it!" She spread out her hands. "Well, monsieur Henri, a teashop must have cakes, if a teashop is to have customers! " She wiped her hands on her floury overall. "Cakes and tarts in two hours, everyone! At monsieur Henri's, of course!"

Well, the hubbub there was, the laughter, the shouting! People disgraced themselves, that day, never had Lézac seen the likes of it! And if you had peered through the windows of monsieur Henri's teashop, later that day, you'd have seen such a sight. Such a sight as was to set tongues wagging for a year and a day! Trays of cakes, of tarts, of cream puffs and croissants, rows of people, singing and smiling--and in the middle of it all, singing loudest of all--madame Gabrielle and monsieur Henri!

And if you'd been watching carefully, you'd have seen madame Gabrielle's glance going back time and time again to the sign that trailed its boldness across the front of the teashop:

Monsieur Henri's Teashop: Cakes and Tarts of Style, all made by Madame Gabrielle, Master Baker of Lézac!

To all readers of A la mode frangourou, joyeux Noël and a happy New Year! And hope you enjoy this story of food, friendship, and French villages..

MASTER BAKER

a story by Sophie Masson

In the tiny French village of Lézac, there once lived a baker called Madame Gabrielle. Out of her ovens came tiny tarts as bright as jewels, cream puffs soft as pillows, croissants like golden moons, pastry horns full of cream. Every morning, the street outside her little shop smelt of heaven! And every morning, the bell above her shop door tinkled on the minute, as the whole village of Lézac came to buy her bread and cakes.

First came Monsieur Malou, and his poodle Cachou, with red ribbon tied all round her ears. He always bowed, and smiled, and said weren't the days splendid--and, oh--Madame. . could he have a cream puff? For Cachou, of course, who had such a sweet tooth!

Then came Madame Touffu, who was dressed all in blue, with her broom and her mop and her scarf. "Oh, madame, madame, it's courage I need--for the floors are so hard and so worn! What do you suggest? Will you get me your best?" And Madame knew just what she meant. Into a bag went two large golden horns, filled and filled to the top with sweet cream. . .

Mademoiselle Celie, who taught at the school, came in blushing and smiling with joy. "Oh, Madame Gabrielle! Your shop smells so good! Can I have a croissant and a tart?"

There was Monsieur Mizette, who farmed pigs and geese; and Pere Robert, the priest, who made goat cheese as a hobby; there was Madame Lebrun, who played on the flute, and Monsieur Barru, who played all-day bowls. There were old ones and young ones and sour ones and bold ones. And children! Children! It was more than heaven, for children, that shop!

So Madame Gabrielle was happy as could be, with her cakes, her shop, her customers, and her cat, Titi. Until the day--oh, sad to say! when all her happiness went away.

One day she woke to the song of birds--and the thump of hammers, the whine of saws. And what should she see in the street straight across--but a signmaker, busily working on a new shopfront, at something which read, bold as you please: "Monsieur Henri's. . . Cakes ". That was all he had done, so far, but it was enough for madame Gabrielle. She dressed in haste and went outside all askew. Who was Monsieur Henri? What did he want here? The village could not have two bakers! She came in at the door, and this is what she saw:

A tall brown man in a bright red suit, balancing plates and pots in his hands. Such elegance, such style! He was all long legs and well-polished shoes, his suit was smart, his hair black and bright. Madame Gabrielle looked down for a moment at herself. Her feet, well-planted in heavy black shoes; her floury overall, her short strong legs. She touched her wild curly hair, and her insides all curled. She looked all around her, and she wanted to cry.

"You are madame Gabrielle?" the tall man said. "I am monsieur Henri. I am so pleased to meet you!"
"But not me, but not me!" said madame Gabrielle, and she turned on her heel out the door and went back to her shop.

All that day and that night, she looked in all kinds of books, and cooked and cooked and cooked. "I will not be beaten by a city baker!" she thought. "He will see, he will see, that monsieur wih his city ways!" Her customers said, when they came in the shop, "Have you seen, madame, what is happening, across the road?"

But Madame Gabrielle just pursed her lips and her face was all sour and all sad. She thought of monsieur Henri and his smart suits, and her insides burned. She would not look, she would not smile.

The next day, the people gasped as they came by madame Gabrielle's windows. Such a sight had never been seen before! Tiers of towering cakes, gigantic pies stuffed with plump fruit and marzipan monsters of all kinds of colours. And a huge chocolate cake, with a sugar-spun king in the centre.

The bell rang all day in the shop, but madame Gabrielle kept the door shut. She'd had no time to make tarts and croissants and cream puffs. She'd just made all those gigantic cakes, and she couldn't bring herself to sell them. Tired as she was, she could not help being glad that across the road, the tall brown man stood with his arms crossed, looking and looking. "There, that'll show him!" she thought, and went to bed happy.

The next day, madame Gabrielle could hardly drag herself out of bed, because she'd spent the night cooking still more. She rushed downstairs in her old plaid nightie, and looked across the street. Ah--it was all still shuttered and quiet! But there was a huge sign saying, "Grand Opening Tomorrow! Be There!"

Madame Gabrielle gritted her teeth. She gathered up the things she'd cooked, and put them in her window. Huge lacquered choux, glistening with caramel; eclairs as bright as lightning; and a wonderful piece indeed, a pastry drummer, drumming ceaselessly on a caramel drum. Crowds gathered, people pointed, looked, exclaimed. Not only were there people from the village, but people, too, from the neighbouring town. They milled, and swilled, but madame Gabrielle did not open her door. She stood, resolute, steely-eyed, staring across the street where not a movement was to be seen. Maybe, she thought hopefully, the city baker would realise it was no good, he would never beat her. . But an uneasy feeling crept in her, still--for perhaps he was simply biding his time, waiting, and he would have a fabulous, a wonderful window, and all the people would flock there! She turned and ran back to her kitchen, to think and plot and dream. Tomorrow she'd have a show to outstrip all shows, something so grand no-one would ever think to look in monsieur Henri's windows!

The next morning, there were huge crowds all gathered, and a buzz of talking and laughing. Reporters were there, and photographers with cameras. Both shops were silent and still--but across madame Gabrielle's windows, a great curtain was drawn across. WAIT AND SEE! said a sign on the curtain.

At precisely 9 o'clock, the curtain was drawn--and oh, how the crowd gasped!For there in the window was something so bold, so grand, that all they could do was look and look, their eyes as round as doughnuts. There, fair and square in the centre of the window, stood a fortress of pastry baked hard as brick, with gleaming caramel windows! And from the windows of the fortress peered a hundred soldiers, all sugar, with bows made of caramel and arrows made of ice.

"What a marvellous thing!" said the reporters and the photographers.

"A most stupendous thing!" said the people of the neighbouring town.

"A most exciting thing, " sighed Monsieur Malou, and madame Touffu, and mademoiselle Celie, and all the village, as they watched the baked-hard fortress, and the sickly-sweet soldiers, and their stomachs rumbled as loud as thunder.

Only the children stood and stared, and stared and stood, and finally one of them said, "Yes, it's marvellous, it's stupendous, but can you eat it?"

"Eat it?" said the reporters, the photographers, the townspeople and the villagers.

"Eat it?" said Madame Gabrielle, and on her face a frown grew and grew and grew. "Eat it? Why, child, that's a work of art, that is! Eat it, indeed!"

"But do you have a tart to sell?" said the child. "Oh, madame Gabrielle, one of your tarts!"

"Or a cream puff?" said Monsieur Malou, counting on his fingers. "It makes five days since I have eaten one of your cream puffs--I mean Cachou has not. And it makes her miserable!"

"A croissant, " sighed Mademoiselle Celie.

"A pastry horn, " moaned madame Touffu.

Madame Gabrielle looked at them for a while. "I have no time, " she said coldly. "No time for ordinary things. " She pointed across to monsieur Henri, who had come out from his silent, shuttered shop. "It is his fault, his alone! Why did he have to come here, and spoil everything?"

But Monsieur Henri smiled. His suit was vanilla today, a soft vanilla like icecream. "I, too, have an opening, today, " he said. With a quick, graceful movement, he drew away the curtain from across his shop window.

"Oh, " said the crowd. "Oh, ah, oh, " said the crowd.

Madame Gabrielle's mouth fell open, like a marzipan frog's. She stared at monsieur Henri's shop, at its glass shelves edged with gold, its rows of plates, its pure white curtains--and especially at its sign, written boldly in gold-leaf paint. She blinked.

"I tried to tell you, " said monsieur Henri. "I am not a baker. I do not like baking. I hate baking! I came here to open a teashop, because I had heard of your wonderful baking, and I thought you could make cakes for me. But then you wouldn't talk to me, and I was worried my dream would never happen!"

Madame Gabrielle looked at monsieur Henri. She looked at monsieur Henri's shop, where the new sign now flashed, in all its glory. Then she turned and looked at the fortress of pastry.

Everyone held their breath--the reporters, the photographers, the townspeople, the villagers. And especially the children!

"It is a marvellous thing, " madame Gabrielle said, nodding. "Oh, yes. But. . " and then she paused, and a slow smile came to her face. "But you'd crack your teeth on it!" She spread out her hands. "Well, monsieur Henri, a teashop must have cakes, if a teashop is to have customers! " She wiped her hands on her floury overall. "Cakes and tarts in two hours, everyone! At monsieur Henri's, of course!"

Well, the hubbub there was, the laughter, the shouting! People disgraced themselves, that day, never had Lézac seen the likes of it! And if you had peered through the windows of monsieur Henri's teashop, later that day, you'd have seen such a sight. Such a sight as was to set tongues wagging for a year and a day! Trays of cakes, of tarts, of cream puffs and croissants, rows of people, singing and smiling--and in the middle of it all, singing loudest of all--madame Gabrielle and monsieur Henri!

And if you'd been watching carefully, you'd have seen madame Gabrielle's glance going back time and time again to the sign that trailed its boldness across the front of the teashop:

Monsieur Henri's Teashop: Cakes and Tarts of Style, all made by Madame Gabrielle, Master Baker of Lézac!

reade more... Résuméabuiyad

White Guy Cooks Thai Food Cart

We have recently moved to the west so pleased to see there is at least one food van around here and it sells more gluten free and vegan options than most of the ones in the west side.

We went tonight to Footscray park where it was parked:

They had three vegan and gluten free menu items, or four if you include edamame which is pretty awesome given a small changing asian menu:

 I couldn't resist the crunchy corn cakes with chilli jam,avocado relish and asian coleslaw and sushi rice ($11.50). These were crunchy and amazing. I seriously regret having to share them with Toby. Next time I'm not sharing them with anyone.

I also got the tofu noodle salad ($10.50) with citrus sesame dressing this was a tad on the small size but the fried tofu bits were perfect and it was full of flavour. Next time we might get three dishes to share between the two of us or just eat dessert later.

I will definitely be eating more from there soon, I look forward to sitting on the grass and eating it at yarraville or footscray park on warm summer night.  My brother and his girlfriend loved their omni dishes particularly their bahm mi sliders.

You can follow them on twitter or facebook to find where they are parked each night.

It has been blogged about by consider the source and footscray food blog.

We have recently moved to the west so pleased to see there is at least one food van around here and it sells more gluten free and vegan options than most of the ones in the west side.

We went tonight to Footscray park where it was parked:

They had three vegan and gluten free menu items, or four if you include edamame which is pretty awesome given a small changing asian menu:

 I couldn't resist the crunchy corn cakes with chilli jam,avocado relish and asian coleslaw and sushi rice ($11.50). These were crunchy and amazing. I seriously regret having to share them with Toby. Next time I'm not sharing them with anyone.

I also got the tofu noodle salad ($10.50) with citrus sesame dressing this was a tad on the small size but the fried tofu bits were perfect and it was full of flavour. Next time we might get three dishes to share between the two of us or just eat dessert later.

I will definitely be eating more from there soon, I look forward to sitting on the grass and eating it at yarraville or footscray park on warm summer night.  My brother and his girlfriend loved their omni dishes particularly their bahm mi sliders.

You can follow them on twitter or facebook to find where they are parked each night.

It has been blogged about by consider the source and footscray food blog.

reade more... Résuméabuiyad